Revelations
by selkieskins
Summary: When the Princess became the Queen, she didn't think she'd be a tyrant like her brother. But as time passes and the outlook grows bleaker some startling revelations throw her - and Albion - into chaos. Princess/Logan, no incest but rated M because they still grew up thinking the same person was their mum and I don't know how people feel about that.


When the man came to the castle with a baby in his arms, Logan was pretending to be asleep. His mother was sitting beside him on his bed, stroking a finger down the bridge of his nose and singing her strange lullaby. She had always sung it to him when he had nightmares, even though he insisted that eight was too old for it. She always replied that she was far older than that and sometimes wished she had someone to sing it to her still. He would quiet, shuffling down under the rich covers until they covered his chin, and allow her to proceed.

She was singing it when Jasper, with sleep heavy eyes, peeked around the door.

"_Down by the reeds, _

_Night blooming weeds _

_Embrace those who go dancing _

_Through- _

Jasper. Hello."

"I am sorry to disturb you, your majesty, but there is a man here who says he must speak to you immediately. I don't know who he is or how he got inside the castle without alerting the guards." Jasper slept in a room through which one had to pass in order to reach the Queen's chambers - his own idea, as the Queen chose not to sleep in the master bedroom, which could be heavily guarded even at night. It was too cold, too hard to heat, she said, but Logan knew there was some other reason. The man who killed his mother's sister had lived in the castle before them. Perhaps that was it.

"Thank you, Jasper," she said quietly. She leant over Logan to check he was asleep, and the boy pretended very hard to be so. Seemingly satisfied, she told the manservant to show the stranger in and stood, her shifting weight causing the wood of the bed frame to creak ever so slightly. The door clicked shut and a moment later opened again. Through his almost-closed eyes, Logan saw a man dressed all in black. A wide brimmed hat with a massive purple feather in it cast his face in shadow and a cape covered him to the knee.

There was a silence. His mother waited for the stranger to properly address his monarch, but the stranger did not speak.

"Will you not bow before your queen?" she asked, finally.

"My, my dear Sparrow, you have let the throne go to your head! And your waist, may I say. Such a shame."

Logan didn't know the man who seemed to know his mother, but he did not like him.

"Reaver?" his mother said. "I didn't know you had returned from Samarkand."

"Some time ago, actually. I bought a large manor house outside the city several months ago, and I am ever so sorryI haven't visited you up in your castle, but I have been rather busy." The man, Reaver, did not sound sorry. In fact, he sounded amused, like the thought of the woman before him living in a castle was somehow the funniest thing he had ever heard.

His mother tensed. "Busy? Reaver-"

"Ah, now, Sparrow. No need to worry; I have committed no- well, very little murder, theft or fraud." Reaver laughed, a strangely dead sound at odds with his singsong voice. "But I admit to having indulged in another of my favourite activities somewhat frequently and… carelessly."

"Reaver," his mother warned. "What have you done, and what do I need to do to fix it?"

The man was still, his eyes fixed on the face of the queen, before he blinked and opened his cloak. In his arms was a baby, asleep. She had a mop of black curls, thick on the top of her head and worn thin on the back from restless movement. She looked very still now, her noisy baby breaths the only indication of life.

His mother instantly moved forwards and took the baby from Reaver, who seemed very relieved to be rid of it.

"I'm sure there are lots of little Reavers running around," he said. "But this one… I think she's a hero. Tore the mother to shreds on the way out - she was a maid or a cook of mine, something like that. Blood all over one of my very favourite rugs, I was quite displeased."

The Queen looked at him with barely disguised disgust.

"And what would you have me do? Have one of my servants raise her?"

"Goodness, no," he said. "I'd have you raise her as your own."

The Queen scoffed, then stilled. "You're serious? You really think I'd take in some… some _get_ of yours, despite what has passed between us?"

Reaver shrugged, a lazy grin on his face. "What cruel soul would condemn a child for the sins of the father? Besides, you seemed to do okay with the first two, apart from the horrid business of them dying, and who better to-"

Logan did not expect his mother to slap the man, but when she did she did it hard. The force of it knocked him a few steps towards the door, and his smug smile became somewhat strained.

"You will not speak of them ever again, or I will kill you. That is a promise," she hissed. The baby began to girn and the Queen started making cooing noises and gently bouncing the bundle in her arms. It quickly quieted. She seemed lost in thought for a long moment before she glanced over her shoulder at Logan, then back at Reaver.

"I know you are only doing this because you think it will gain you some power. But I will take her. In return you will have nothing to do with her - you will not speak to her, you will not look at her, you will not be in the same building as her for as long as you live. Those are my conditions."

"So harsh, little Sparrow. But if that is what must be, then it must be. I'll show myself out."

Logan watched as the man turned - his finely heeled boots squeaking on the wooden floor, his cape swirling out around him - and disappeared into the dark beyond the boy's bedroom door.

Logan spent the next eighteen years of his life avoiding the girl, at first because he was jealous of the attention his mother lavished on her, then because he had more pressing matters, and then because she was a young lady and he didn't know what to do any more. They were cold to each other, not because there was hatred but because there was nothing. They did not speak more than they had to, and when it came the Queen's death only served to solidify the distance.

She was never his sister, and they acted accordingly even if only he knew why.

It was eventually she who closed the distance between them, by marching towards him with a pistol pointed at his heart.


End file.
